Swimming is the defining feature of Coral Gables High senior Hannah Cordes’ high school career.
“I swim the 200 individual medley and 500 freestyle,” she said.
Cordes has won her events at the district level a couple of times individually and went to state her sophomore and junior years. She competed at the state championships both individually and as part of a relay team.
“I did as well as I thought I would do,” she said. “Regionals were my best meet for the high school season.”
She also won for her club team, Miami Swimming. In fact, she has achieved enough recognition that she is going to swim for the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, a Division 1 university.
She will swim this summer for her club team before moving to North Florida in August.
This year, Cordes played a half season of water polo for Gables.
Most of her community service revolved around swimming. She was a swim coach for the Miami Swimming summer camp at Ransom Everglades as well as kids from Breakthrough Miami at Ransom.
They also taught children from South Miami how to swim.
There was an urgency to teaching those kids as the city was opening a new pool and there were a lot of children who did not know how to swim.
“They wanted to make sure the kids knew how to swim before the pool was finished,” she said. “A lot of them were very scared, especially the very young ones. Eventually we got them to swim on their own. That was very rewarding.”
She’s also volunteered with the Can AM Paralympics.
At school, Cordes was a member of Gables Earth (the environmental club), the International Baccalaureate Society and she is a member of student government. She has been student government treasurer and this year she was secretary of events.
Cordes wrote for the online website and takes videos with her Go-Pro camera.
“I’m passionate about my photography,” she said.
She plans to take a biomedical major.
— Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
